D&D 5E (2014) A simple questions for Power Gamers, Optimizers, and Min-Maxers.

[dave2008]

It seems like a better way to ask that might be to see if a optimizer has more fun playing with players who are better optimizers, or with players who are worse optimizers?

That is another way of looking at it. I've realized I should have been more clear when I wrote the OP.

 

[dave2008]

That's like asking the rest of us wether we need to breathe in order to live.
The answer is YES.
YES.
YES they do.

Thank you for clear and simple response!

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

My preferred option is that there aren't preferred options which is also why I make a significant effort to rebalance system mechanics in my own game. The only reason I optimise or encourage it, is because there even is a gap at all and I don't want my players to suffer simply because of a "wrong" choice at one point or another during character advancement.

If the playing field is level and there are no superior options, then you don't have to optimise and all choices add interesting options rather than power development or delay. Obviously some builds will always be better in some circumstances, but that's not the balance I'm talking about. Variety is interesting, being good at something is interesting, but when there is clearly an optimal choice across multiple instances, then that really isn't a choice anymore.

Take Great Weapon Master. If you fight with a two-handed, heavy weapon, then this choice is clearly, far and away, the best feat choice to make. That's no longer really a choice for the character. Now, if GWM was good but there was another option, and those two options were not clearly better overall in most situations, than the other, then you have an interesting choice to make that defines the character in different ways.

So optimisation for me isn't really so much about power as it is about necessity due to system imbalance.

 

[Jester David]

It's an interesting theoretical discussion but largely moot: that amount of perfect balance is impossible. Zero-sum games are pretty much just game theory.
Even in Rock, Paper, Scissors there's a "better" option.

I imagine a lot of builders and character creators would be happy with customization that was balanced but offered a different bonus.
Other people do just want to "win" and create the most powerful character.

 

[Tony Vargas]

i agree, and I don't know that it is even possible. I am just curious if such a game would inherently turn off people who enjoy building "better" characters.

I honestly don't think it would. Quite possibly the opposite. The 'rewards' for applying system mastery are smaller the better balanced the game, but the number of potentially viable combinations increases. In a badly balanced game, whether lacking many meaningful choices at all, or having a few obviously-superior ones, the optimization exercise is simpler and less interesting (if the game suffers from a lot of 'chaff,' even tedious), even if it may be much higher-reward.

Imagine you have weapon X. Weapon X can do A, B, C, or D damage (imagine Slashing, Bludgeoning .... er, acid, and, um, Cheese!). Either these distinctions are, in essense, meaningless (either de jure - it really doesn't matter, they are just flavor, or de facto, because the game is perfectly balanced and there are an equal number of monsters that you will encounter with resistances and vulnerabilities to each*).

Distinctions that are meaningless don't contribute to balance. If you have only one choice, or if you have many choices that are identical, your game is just as imbalanced as if it had many choices, one of which was vastly/strictly superior to the others.

The question is simple: Does a power gamer need to power game to have fun?

Different question. When I powergame a build-to-concept, it's to realize the concept as effectively as possible. It needn't even be /as/ effective as the next PC, as long as its viable.

I can answer part of your question: "being better than everyone else" is not part of the fun for me.

I think that's the important part.

 

[dave2008]

Hemlock, thank you for the lengthy and thorough response.

Nevertheless. Finding brokenly strong combinations is indeed part of the fun for me, whether or not I actually spend time in play exploiting those broken combinations as a power fantasy.

I guess my follow up question would be how broken? Is it fun to send a lot of time to get a little benefit or do you need it to be truly broken?

Dave2008, I used an example earlier w/ blunt weapons vs. piercing weapons, and you denied that that was the effect you were going for, and implied that ranged vs. melee specialization was more what you were going for instead. I don't see a distinction though. I suspect that any system you found balanced would look boringly simplistic to me, just at a higher level of abstraction. If 50% of the monsters you meet are kitable with ranged attacks and 50% require melee attacks to kill, I'll suss that out pretty quick even if you hide it beneath layers of math and indirect rules. Then one of two things will be true. Either:

(1) There will still be a mix of ranged and melee PCs which (locally or globally) meaningfully optimizes a party's tactical options to allow them to beat the enemy more effectively than a party which doesn't plan for those tactics in advance; OR
(2) All mixes of builds are equally effective, and the only interesting decision points occur during the game itself.

#2 isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make complex chargen seem kind of pointless.

Well, I stepped in where I shouldn't have. I didn't want to discuss how it might look in an actual game, just the mindset. That being said bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing could be a meaningful choice if the game was designed to make it so, clearly 5e is not.

What this adds up to is that I'm highly skeptical that you could build a game which would seem balanced to you, and seem balanced (non-exploitable) to me, and also have fun and interesting chargen choices (to me).
.

I'm not trying too design a game, just want to understand what makes an optimizer tick And to be clear I'm not interested in balance. I personally think the game should be more unbalanced, but for me that is not a power game, optimization issued.

 

[mellored]

Unicorns are also hypotetical, but probably more likely to really exist than an RPG that provides genuinely different characters that are still perfectly balanced.

None exist at the moment, but it's possible to engineer one.

Unicorns that is. Not perfectly balanced RPG's.

 

[dave2008]

A complex choice is not necessarily a meaningful. Your example is just a more complicated form of Hemlock's analogy. There is no meaningful difference between "every weapon does d8 damage" and "every weapon does d8 or d10 damage, but the d10 weapons hit 18% fewer times".



This does not make any sense to me. If everybody turns out to be equally effective, then you aren't performing any cost/benefit analysis. You're simply choosing a preference. If a scout and a fighter are equally effective, then all you're doing is picking which one you like better. If two shirts are equally effective but one is blue and the other is green, you're simply deciding which one you like more. There's no cost/benefit analysis to be made.

Listen, I'm not trying to design a game - I am interested in the mindset.

Fortunately i think you have tipped your cap with your assumptions about meaningful. Does meaningful to you = significant mechanical benefit? Meaningful might be you can play an archer more effectively or you need to find a way to use tactics to increase your chance to hit with a great sword.

 

[dave2008]

Hmm.., "better" than what, exactly? I guess I've played plenty of games where every player built and played their character very well - I think those are the games I enjoy the most. I wouldn't say any comparative factor played into that. Is this what you mean?

That's helpful definitely. So would enjoy a game where everyone always builds great characters? Also, if everyone is built well, how do you determine that, what is your point of reference?

 

[dave2008]

I power game because it is what my character would do, because it makes sense for what any adventurer would do in such a dangerous world. I wish I didn't have to. I wish there was a good in-game reason for many characters to make different choices without it simply being that the character is bad at understanding how the world works.

I don't like games that require a significant degree of system mastery before you can get into really playing it. I prefer games where there is minimal difference in power between a min-maxxed character and the obvious sort of character that a new player would make. I much prefer playing the actually game that takes place after the characters all meet in a tavern, rather than the character-creation mini-game that is like homework everyone has to do before they can start playing the real game.

Thank you for your response, that is helpful.